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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29405247">Valentine's Invitational</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina'>Colubrina</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Arbor College [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Fluff, Valentine's fluff, hockey fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:15:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,663</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29405247</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Arbor College Valentine's Hockey Invitational is here, and Emma is prepared to watch a lot of hockey and cheer Chase on.  What she's not prepared for is male hierarchical posturing sublimated into sport.  Or how much she likes it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Female Character/Original Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Arbor College [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2160147</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Valentine's Invitational</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivieblake/gifts">olivieblake</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Emma was fine until she saw the other team’s list of players. The rink was cold enough she wished she’d gotten a cup of coffee, but instead of making her way back down to concessions, she picked up a program someone had left behind and started reading it. Maybe if she distracted herself, she wouldn’t notice the cold.</p><p>The Arbor College Valentine’s Invitational, it read, which was a fancy way of saying she was going to spend a lot of time at the ice rink this weekend. She knew that. It was a long-standing tradition, filled with fine young men, scholar-athletes, blah blah blah. It was the standard marketing nonsense about the character-building value of sport, so she skipped to the players on the opposing team. Jack. Mason. Seth. Each one had a badly photocopied black and white photograph and a brief bio, mostly listing off the high schools they’d gone to and obligatory love for their mothers.  And at the very bottom of the page was his name.</p><p>Axel Michaud.</p><p>He looked the same. Same stupid smile. Same insincere protestations of gratitude for the time his mother spent driving him to practice. Emma hadn’t known he’d gotten into a college program. She hadn’t thought he was good enough, to be honest.</p><p>She missed most of the game. Chase scored a goal at one point, and itty-bitty Colby got into a fight. It all passed before numb eyes that kept scanning the players, looking for ‘Michaud’ on a jersey. She wasn’t even sure whether she wanted to see him so she could revel in how bad he’d look compared to the Arbor College players or whether she wanted him to not be here, for the program to be wrong, for him to be benched somewhere for bad grades or a broken arm or being a general failure at everything.</p><p>The sugary memory of his mouth on hers behind the gym was so vivid she could have been drinking the Gatorade herself.</p><p>She should have gotten that coffee.</p><p>She met Chase after the game. His curls were soaked with sweat, and – as usual – he was surrounded by a pack of giant hockey players. Most of them were busy suggesting Colby go to the hospital, maybe even be flown out by helicopter.  That no one as small as him could possibly survive a fight without at the <em>very</em> least some internal bleeding. Maybe a punctured lung. It was all good-natured teasing, and she wasn’t worried.  Neither was Chase, who picked her up and spun her around, still high on the adrenaline of the win. “Did you see how their goalie just scuffed it?” he asked with delight. “He should be embarrassed.”</p><p>Emma would have answered, but the other team was filing out of their locker room. Their goalie did not appear to be especially embarrassed, but it wasn’t him she was looking for. It was Axel. <em>Don’t be here</em>, she thought to herself. She hadn’t seen him on the ice, and maybe she’d get lucky.</p><p>True to form in all their interactions, however, Axel disappointed.  This time by coming out of the locker room.  By spotting her, still in Chase’s arms. By breaking off from his teammates and loping over, a sly grin on his chiseled face.</p><p>“Emmy,” he said with what almost looked like delight. Maybe it was. Maybe he was happy to see her and wasn’t going to be a dick. He had to know she went here, after all. Her mother told everyone she came in contact with about Arbor, along with a tale of woe about the tuition she was not paying. Maybe he’d meant to look her up and was happy she’d saved him the trouble. </p><p>“Axe,” Emma said in as neutral a tone as possible. She might have been pleased to see him. She might have wanted to knife him under the bleachers. Chase lowered her slowly to the ground.  She could feel the questions he wasn’t asking, but she wasn’t sure how to answer them. </p><p>“I see you’ve still got a type,” Axel said as if he’d ever known anything about her.</p><p>“Em's consorting with the enemy,” one of their own team members said with a hoot, and someone else punched Chase in the arm. He ignored it, his eyes never wavering from her ex.</p><p>“Chase, this is Axel,” she said. “We went to high school together.”</p><p>“<em>Went to high school together,” </em>Axel said, making air quotes with his fingers. “Undersells it a bit, babe.”</p><p>Emma’s smile got tighter. They had gone to high school together. She spent too much time watching him skate, and he dumped her via text when he made varsity. He was right that she was underselling their relationship, but she didn’t particularly want to drag it out. “I didn’t know you were still playing,” she said.</p><p>“Can’t keep me off the ice,” Axel said.</p><p>She hadn’t noticed him<em> on</em> the ice, but fine.</p><p>Chase wrapped an arm around her, pulling her against him. She should object. He was <em>very</em> clearly doing some kind of male territory-marking thing, and that was exactly the kind of patriarchal crap she hated most about sports. But Axel’s eyes twitched in a way she recognized, so Emma decided she would let it go. Just this once. Just because it was so obviously making Axel jealous.</p><p>
  <em>It’s not working out. Gotta spend too much time practicing now that I’m on varsity. See you around babe.</em>
</p><p>She could still see the text in her mind’s eye. Prick. How dare he get jealous now when <em>he’d </em>been the one to dump <em>her</em>.</p><p>She snuggled more tightly against Chase’s side and gave Axel her best approximation of delighted beaming. “That’s so awesome that you’re still playing. How long are you guys going to be here?”</p><p>Now that you’re out of the tournament, she meant. Now that we beat you.</p><p>“We don’t go back until day after tomorrow,” Axel said. “Should probably hit the books, but I didn’t bring them. You know me.”</p><p>She did.</p><p>“You know,” Chase said. “The rink is booked all day, but if you’ve got some skates you don’t mind getting banged up a bit, there’s a great pond on campus where we could play a little friendly one-on-one. If you don’t have anything else to do.”</p><p>“I don’t think –” Emma started to say, but Axel cut her off.</p><p>“That would be great.”</p><p>“What are you doing?” she hissed at Chase after he’d borrowed a pen and some paper and dictated directions to the pond. He gave her a look of utter innocence that she knew not to trust at all.</p><p>“I’m just getting in a little practice time against someone whose style I don’t know,” he said far too seriously for the answer to be the truth. Or not the whole truth, at least.</p><p>“Uh-huh,” she said.</p><p>“You should watch.”</p><p>She should <em>not</em>. She should let him do whatever this was without her there and instead use the time to do something practical. She could go to the library and do some research, or go to the gym and run a couple of miles on the treadmill. She could do any number of mature and responsible things, but what she did was put on boots designed to withstand a Canadian winter, tuck herself into a coat so warm it dared you to feel chilled and hiked out to the pond. The trails were packed and icy, and the tree branches weighed down with snow. When she got there, Chase was already on the ice, skating in slow, wide circles. Axel was sitting on an old wooden bench still lacing up his skates. Everyone else had found something smarter to do with their afternoon.</p><p>Emma did not want to sit next to Axel, so she stood awkwardly on the path, mittened hands shoved down into her pockets, waiting for him to finish up and move. Chase came over as soon as he spotted her, striding along the packed snow when he got off the ice. She tipped her chin up, and he kissed her nose. “Finish the paper?” he asked.</p><p>“I still need to proofread.”</p><p>“Want me to look it over?” he asked, which was sweet but Chase’s many strengths didn’t include editing.  </p><p>She glanced at Axel out of the corner of her eye. “If you have time,” she said. “I know you guys have another game tonight since you won that last one.”</p><p>“For you, I can make time,” Chase said. “And it’s not like this invitational is that challenging.  More like a rec league.”</p><p>Emma managed not to snicker.</p><p>“Let’s go,” Axel said. Emma leaned against Chase as she watched Axel stumble across the ground before getting his feet under him on the ice. It was probably a sign of bad character that she liked seeing him so clumsy, even for a moment. Then he swept out to the center of the pond, turned and skated backward in a circle. He’d always been weirdly proud he could skate in reverse. As if it were some rare, unachievable goal instead of something every hockey player over eight could do.</p><p>No, over five.</p><p>He was graceful on the ice. Emma had to admit that. He always had been.  Chase dropped a chaste kiss on her cheek before gliding out to meet Axel. She pulled her scarf back up and sat, winter cold clinging to her, muted but not silenced by layers. Small portable nets were pulled out and set at each end of the pond, and presumably, rules agreed to. Emma watched them move to shake before their ‘friendly’ game. Axel pulled his hand away at the last minute, laughing and sliding backward on the ice. Chase shrugged, good-natured to the end, and dropped a puck from his pocket. It hit the ice with a dull clunk, and they were off.</p><p>A couple of Axel’s teammates came clomping up along the snow, a few minutes late but ready to cheer their guy on. Only, their guy didn’t seem to be doing that well. Chase let him get halfway to the net, then swiped the puck from him so smoothly he was well past the midway point and racing to his own net before Axel even skidded to a sharp stop and pelted after him. He wasn’t fast enough. Chase slammed the puck into the goal, then skated in a lazy, backward path. “Count that one as a warmup?” he suggested.</p><p>Emma sucked in her breath at the sheer cockiness of that. She couldn’t hear Axel’s reply, but she knew from the set of his shoulders he wasn’t happy.</p><p>“Come on, Michaud,” one of his teammates called out. “Don’t be such a puss–” He stopped and glanced at Emma with a sudden flush to his cheeks. She crossed her arms and scowled. Of course Axel was on a team with misogynistic pigs. It was exactly the sort of place he’d fit in.</p><p>Axel fished the puck out and knocked it back to the center of the ice, where Chase stopped it with his stick. There was a moment where neither man moved, then Chase lunged for the puck, knocking it to the side, out of Axel’s reach, and skating faster than a person should be able to in order to take control of it and slide it down the ice. Axel tried to get in his way, but no matter where he was, Chase was already someplace else. Right, left, it didn’t matter. This time, Chase skated all the way up to the goal, paused for a beat, then hit the puck in with the smallest of taps.</p><p>“Fuck,” one of the players watching said.</p><p>The third round, Chase kept knocking the puck towards his net, then letting Axel skate to get it. As soon as her ex-boyfriend got about three-quarters of the way back across the ice, Chase would steal the puck again and send it soaring toward his goal.</p><p>“Did Michaud piss on that guy’s mom or something?” one of his teammates asked right as Chase finally knocked the puck into his goal.</p><p>“Best three out of five?” he asked, his voice carrying. He sounded absolutely cheerful. He wasn’t gloating. He wasn’t acknowledging <em>at all</em> that he was skating circles around Axel and making him look like an utter fool.</p><p>Axel didn’t answer. His stick jerked as he hit the puck, and his skates made short, sharp motions. He was almost stomping across the frozen pond like a sullen toddler.</p><p>Emma shouldn’t be enjoying this. She <em>shouldn’t. </em>It was exactly the sort of thing she opposed.  She’d written an <em>entire sociology paper </em>about masculine rituals around sport and how they led to negative social outcomes. Chase was only doing this because Axel was her ex, and he was being competitive and weird and it was everything bad about athletics and – oh God – she loved it. She could watch Chase make Axel look like an idiot all day long.</p><p>Fucker had dumped her <em>via text</em> because she wasn’t good enough to be his girlfriend once he was on varsity. And he hadn’t exactly kept it a secret either, and she’d given up trying out for the musical so she could go to his hockey games and cheer and <em>he wasn’t even very good at kissing.</em></p><p>Chase, however, Chase was <em>excellent. </em>At hockey too. And he knew how to wrap a gift. And he had <em>quite literally</em> been a choir boy until his voice changed. He was good and kind and thoughtful, and he was out there making an <em>absolute ass</em> out of Axel.</p><p>This was awesome.</p><p>Chase won three out of five.  Then four out of seven.  Then five out of nine.  By the time he clapped Axel on the shoulder and said he’d love to play more but he had dinner plans with his girlfriend, Emma was cheering with delight at each goal.  If she was going to toss all her feelings about sexist male displays out the window, she might as well toss them with vigor.</p><p>She did plan to mention later tonight that while this had been <em>very</em> gratifying, she didn’t want him to make a habit of showing up the other men in her life or defending her honor.  Once was endearing.  Twice might be a problem. Three times was right out. But as she watched Chase knock the puck in the net over and over again, Emma decided that this might be information she could deliver <em>after</em> expressing her enthusiasm for his hockey skills.  She intended that bit of communication to involve far fewer clothes than she was wearing at the moment, and maybe she’d open the bottle of champagne she’d been saving. It was a romantic holiday, after all, and he <em>had</em> won his last game.  These were things that deserved to be celebrated.  While naked.</p><p>It was almost certainly anticipating the evening that made her throw her arms around Chase when he skated back up to her, and that was definitely why she kissed him with melting abandon.  She absolutely, positively wouldn’t make out with her boyfriend in public just to make an ex jealous. </p><p>She wouldn’t deny that was a nice cherry on the sundae of this glorious, winter afternoon, but it wasn’t the reason.  After all, Chase had already humiliated him.  No need to make it worse.</p><p>Well, maybe a <em>little</em> need.  Or a teeny-tiny malicious want.  “You looked great out there,” she said a touch too loudly to Chase.</p><p>He grinned down at her.  She made trivial chit chat with Axel’s teammates as skates were unlaced and boots put on, then slipped an arm around Chase’s waist and gave her ex the sweetest smile she could.  “It was so good to see you, Axe.  Tell your mom I said hi, and good luck with the rest of your season.”</p><p>Then she and Chase left together.</p><p>She had some things to invite him to do.  It <em>was</em> Valentine’s, after all.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you Jenny A. for beta reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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